HUNDREDS of offences Gary Haggarty confessed to - but which will never be read out in court - give an insight into the criminality of the notorious Mount Vernon UVF.
Numerous businesses who were forced to pay money to the north Belfast gang are listed among the 301 'Taken Into Consideration' (TIC) charges.
While loyalist paramilitaries have always denied extorting small businesses for 'protection' money, the one-time UVF commander gave a full breakdown of bars, fast food takeaways and nightclubs he claimed were told to hand over weekly sums to the gang.
Among them is a Belfast bar frequented at the time by a mainly nationalist clientèle.
The Irish News contacted some of the businesses but all denied paying money to the UVF, despite Haggarty's admissions.
The supergrass told police he was 'making an unwanted demand of £25 a week' with menaces over a seven-year period from one bar, totalling over £8,000 between January 2000 and March 2007.
Three Chinese takeaways and a kebab shop in Belfast were also being forced to pay Haggarty £15 a week, and a pub in Larne was being extorted for £100 weekly.
Several of the bars Haggarty claims to have been extorting have since gone out of business.
While the amounts being demanded were relatively small, when added up they amounted to thousands of pounds per month going into the coffers of the gang, which was also heavily involved in drug dealing.
Several of Haggarty's TIC charges are also linked to possession of drugs or robbing drug dealers.
One of the more bizarre charges is that on a date between January 2005 and January 2007 he had in his possession "the finance files of the Carrickfergus UVF".
The files were documents that contained the names of businesses and amounts being extorted by the Carrickfergus UVF along with other debts linked to loan sharking and drugs.
